“I open the app, and I see him having fun” comments Robin Cox on her son Brayden Kelly, who attended summer camp at the Michindon Conference Center in Hillsdale, MI earlier this year. “It shows him playing nine square and swimming. It makes me feel so much better getting a glimpse of him with what appears to be new friends and having fun.”
Cox is one of the tens of thousands embracing the use of facial recognition and mobile photo delivery at her son’s camp to get a peek into the fun her camper is having each day. At its core, this was the premise for starting Waldo in the first place. Like many parents, she worries about her son going away for weeks to camp for the first time, and feels relief at having a resource like Waldo to help ease her tension – and put her mind at rest.
“It made me feel a lot better” Cox admits, a self-proclaimed “paranoid mommy” to 12-year-old Brayden. “He didn’t know anyone. None of his friends were there. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, is he going to be OK?’
Waldo’s technology has taken off over the past three years and is now being utilized at camps across the US. Parents love getting a view into their camper’s experience without the endless late-night searching through online galleries of yesteryear. Most parents say they are saving hours every evening.
“It’s a game-changer,” says Terri White of Ann Arbor, MI, who has been using Waldo for the past two summers to view and interact with her three children attending Springhill Camps in Evart, MI. “It’s a lot of fun to see their smiling faces and to have all their camp pictures in one place and organized.”
For parents like Cox and White, Waldo creates a connection with immediacy and personalization that is unlike anything else. With daily, direct delivery to their phones via text or push notifications they leave the searching to Waldo and don’t obsess over huge galleries and desperate late night searching for the photos their camper might be in out of the hundreds posted. They also love Waldo’s invites feature which allows them to share their camper’s photostream with up to six family members, allowing for spouses, grandparents and even their camper to receive the same photos they do!
Waldo’s approach is unique in the industry and has driven a decrease in calls and emails to camp staff which frees up time to focus more on their campers. Kelly Jo Cox, Marketing Director for Trout Creek Bible Camp tells us, “By using Waldo’s facial recognition and notification technology, our parent “wellness calls” went down dramatically during the summer! Parents were able to see photos of their child with smiles on their faces and be reassured every day that they are safe, happy and having fun.”
Safe, personalized, and secure – Waldo’s service continues to change the way parents, campers, and camps interact – and cultivate more positive experiences that allow all to simply live the moment.
